Contrary to AGW Narrative, Florence Formed in “Abnormally Cool” Waters
Florence made landfall in North Carolina as a CAT 1 hurricane last Friday, and with it came the misleading claim that an “ocean heat wave” –caused by man-made global warming– supercharged the storm.
In comparing Florence to last year’s Hurricane Harvey, The New York Times reported that “both of these hurricanes formed in unusually warm waters.”
A totally fraudulent claim.
According to Cato Institute atmospheric scientist Ryan Maue, “Ocean surface temperatures along Florence’s track were abnormally cool for most of its life-cycle partly due to the unusual, higher latitude of the storm.
“The integrated [sea surface temperature] track-based anomaly averaged from Sept 4-11 was 0.6°C below 1985-2017 normal.”
Florence intensified from a Tropical Storm — the briefly reached Category 4 on Sept 5 before being sheared apart about 24-hours later.
The SST was only near 26°C on September 5th — 3rd coldest since 1985 — behind 1996 and 2000.
Florence overachieved over marginal SSTs. pic.twitter.com/qLF8B8Jqyh
— Ryan Maue | weathermodels.com (@RyanMaue) September 18, 2018
Florence formed in colder than normal waters in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, and the storm briefly reached major hurricane strength in these cooler waters.
It then headed into warmer waters near the U.S. coast but failed to behave as forecasters had hoped–I mean expected– and weakened, falling apart soon after.
Maue added, “even these warmer waters near the U.S. coast were actually close to the 30-year average.”
We’re used to exaggerated and fraudulent claims supporting the AGW agenda.
Florence wasn’t playing ball, so they flat out lied:
#Florence is getting supercharged by near-record warm (~2C/3.6F above normal) subtropical North Atlantic ocean surface temperatures (https://t.co/8vutoyB14S). Even just a 1C global-warming trend can increase the likelihood of this sort of ‘ocean heat wave’ ten-fold or more…
— Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) September 10, 2018
GSM
